Chicken brain, ant eggs, and basketball

Jacob’s been playing a lot of basketball here in Mexico. Since I’ve known him, he has said he wanted to be in the best shape of his life by age 30.

After making a lot of connections and playing in tournaments and even winning a trophy with some Church ball,

 

Jacob was invited to play a professional basketball game.

It was his first paid game and we went in with low expectations—maybe it would not even be paid at all, but he ended up getting paid several hundred dollars! He put on a dunk show, and people asked for his autograph.

It wasn’t easy getting there though.

We’d just driven about 6 hours coming back from a vacation to Acapulco. Jacob thought it was in the city of Puebla, two hours away…after we’d been driving for two hours, we asked our driver’s daughter if we were almost there. She said we had about 6 hours to go because we were taking an alternative route to avoid a dangerous road. It still took us a while to figure out we were going to Puebla the state, not the city…a little town in the mountains called Huehuetla.

It took us about 12 hours through ear-popping altitude changes to get there. Not what this hungry, pregnant, allergy-prone sleep-deprived woman was expecting. Our driver’s racing over speed bumps and then laughing hysterically and apologizing afterwards, and having no idea where he was going and depending on Jacob’s Android GPS to get us there, and being the only car on the lonely highways of central Mexico at one in the morning were all part of the fun. Also, it was Easter weekend, so we drove around for hours looking for an open hotel. Our driver, who was the owner of the team or in some way associated with it, I’m not sure how, was very nice though, and won me over by calling me a tough warrior so I couldn’t complain. In the end, it turned out to be absolutely worth it. The state of Puebla is really charming, and after the game  we attended a traditional dance with live band and costumed folk in the town square.

 

They brought us chicken to eat. Tasted like chicken pot pie to me. Jacob was positive it was chicken brain. I threw up the next morning, but that could have been the combination of the windy roads through the mountains and petal-to-the-metal driver more than the chicken brain. Chickens and turkeys seemed to be the only animals they raised in this town, so I imagine they get creative with all the body parts.

On the way there, Jacob tried the traditional maggot tacos and ant egg tacos. He couldn’t eat more than a bite of either one. He couldn’t even muster pretending to like it for our driver, who endorsed them. I abstained. Didn’t get a picture, but looked similar to this:

 

I’m really proud of Jacob that he has managed to achieve his dreams of playing pro ball just by making his own contacts in the country we happened to be in. He played very well and hopefully this will lead to more opportunities!